Zephyr

The Zephyr Test Management Platform has the Zephyr server at its core, which can be accessed from the cloud via SaaS, or installed On-Premise. The Zephyr server is not only the central storage for all of your testing assets and information - Requirements, Test cases, Execution results, Requirements traceability information, etc., but it is also the tracking system used to track all updates. It pushes this information in real-time, in the form of comprehensive metrics to anyone viewing metrics or Dashboards. Access the Zephyr server via browser-based Testing Desktops: there is no client software to install, maintain, or upgrade. The user interface is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) and works with all popular browsers and operating systems. Zephyr provides role-based logins. Custom roles can be created and assigned access to different projects and the applications under them.

Zephyr has the concept of contextual release spaces. All of your testing assets in Zephyr are organized by Projects, and then further organized into Releases/Iterations/Sprints. These contextual spaces contain all the requirements, testcases, schedules, assignments, results, reports, metrics and documents specific to that testing lifecycle. Test cases are reusable across multiple projects and releases.

Desktops & Dashboards

Zephyr is based around the concept of Desktops & Dashboards. Every user role has a customized Testing Desktop with relevant applications that allow them to do their jobs more efficiently. They can all share data from a centralized repository on the Zephyr server and communicate via a collaborative backbone. Dashboards are real-time, keeping the whole company updated on every aspect of testing and product quality.

People & Projects

Manage all aspects of your team. Keep their contact info, access, roles, and assignments in one place. Each member gets access to their personal Test Desktop based on their role and assignment. Provide access to everybody via Custom Roles. Define projects regardless of test methodology and provide as much or as little visibility to others in the organization. This automatically creates contextual project spaces in which you can set up multiple Releases or Sprints. Provide Department level visibility to everybody in the project team and upper management via detailed Department Dashboards.

Creation & Execution

Define the Repository structure for a specific Release or Sprint and re-use testcases from other Projects or Releases with drag and drop capability. Import Testcases or create and edit testcases directly within Zephyr with ease. Focus on what needs to be executed while providing all the supporting information needed. Based off of the test run created by the Execution Scheduling and Assignment module, the Test Case Execution application allows testers to run both manual and automated tests from one place.

Metrics, Trend Analysis, Custom Reports

Real time status updates from various activities (creation, execution, defects, requirements) are shown in detailed drill-down out-of-the-box metrics and in Project Dashboards. Using the Trend Analysis engine allows you to view historical trends for Testcase creation, execution, and defects across the entire span of a Release cycle, or for specific time periods. Define custom reports and export in a variety of formats.

Automation

Automation is becoming an important part of testing. Using the innovative ZBot and ZIP technologies, Zephyr not only provides interoperability with automation systems - commercial, open source, or home grown - but also provides metrics and reports on automated versus manual tests across the entire test suite. Continue to leverage your existing investments in automation and also track and report on both manual and automation testing from one place. Easily use multiple automation tools and rest assured that Zephyr is future-proofed if you pick a new tool further down the road.

Planning & Scheduling

Create and organize your test requirements, and also create and map detailed test cases and link them to existing automation scripts in an optimized test case creation application. Build dynamic and visual schedules, define software builds and test environments, quickly grab the test cases to be run in each phase and assign them to testers - all from a single, intuitive screen. Per Release or Sprint, Test Leads can now build a dynamic Test Case Repository tree to incorporate the various kinds of tests that will be run based upon their test plans. This repository can be built from scratch, inherited from previous releases, imported from Excel or a combination thereof.

Defect Tracking

The faster you get a defect into the system, the sooner a Developer can start looking at it and fixing it. The easier it is for you to find fixed bugs, the faster you can start verifying the fix and closing it out. Whether it be the inbuilt defect tracking application, JIRA, or Bugzilla, Zephyr provides an interface that allows you to do just that and from all the right places too. With a real-time two-way integration to these defect tracking systems (as opposed to storing defects in two systems and experiencing synchronizing problems), Zephyr allows for defects to be created, modified, updated, exported, printed and as an added bonus, allows the pulling in of real-time defect metrics from these external defect tracking systems and displays them in drill-down project dashboards for up to the minute quality analysis.

Learn more about Zephyr features and check out the rich engaging screens.